David Ignatius's Blog, page 132

A terrorist with gang-leader charisma

A glimpse of the passionate loyalty inspired by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, comes in a recent video made by a 20-year-old Muslim recruit from Cardiff, Wales.

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Robert Gates gives the White House a mixed report card on recent events

Former defense secretary Robert Gates gives President Obama a mixed review on his recent foreign policy decisions. He’s sharply critical of the decision to trade Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl but generally supportive of Obama’s recent moves regarding Iraq.

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Obama’s tough choices in Iraq

President Obama came nearly full circle on Iraq on Thursday, sending military advisers back to cope with that country’s disintegration as U.S. officials lobbied for replacement of the prime minister that the United States helped install. These were the right choices, but they were a measure of how badly U.S. policy has gone awry.

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The plan for saving Iraq begins by ousting Maliki

What would an effective quick response to the catastrophic civil wars in Iraq and Syria look like? Sometimes in foreign policy, as in sports, it can be useful to visualize the right technique — and then hit the ball.

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Piecing together the shattering Middle East

Let’s look at the reality on the ground in the Middle East: Iraq and Syria are effectively partitioned along sectarian lines; Lebanon and Yemen are close to fracturing; Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia survive intact but as increasingly authoritarian states.

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Why the rivalry between ISIS and al-Qaeda may lead to attacks on America

As al-Qaeda splits and morphs and into different affiliates and offshoots, U.S. counterterrorism officials worry about what one calls a “potential competitive dynamic” in which different factions — including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now sowing civil war in Iraq — seek to bolster their credibility by attacking the United States. This new danger of attacks on the U.S. homeland is what concerns the Obama administration most about the splintering process that has created ISIS, a group so extreme that it has been denounced by Ayman Zawahiri, the nominal leader of the core al-Qaeda group.

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Maliki’s Iraq disaster

The stunning gains this week by Iraq’s Sunni insurgents carry a crucial political message: Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite prime minister of Iraq, is a polarizing sectarian politician who has lost the confidence of his army and nation. He cannot put a splintered Iraq together again, no matter how many weapons the Obama administration sends him.

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David Ignatius: The return of al-Qaeda

The capture Tuesday of Mosul, the hub of northern Iraq, by al-Qaeda-linked militants is an alarm bell that violent extremists are on the rise again in the Middle East. And it’s a good time for President Obama to explain more about how he plans to fight this menace without making the mistakes of the past.

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In ‘Hard Choices,’ Hillary Clinton is seen as hesitant to take big risks

“Hard Choices” begins and ends in the empty voice of a campaign speech. But in between, it contains a clear and at times riveting account of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s four years as secretary of state.

This is a careful book, written tactically to burnish friendships and avoid making enemies. Perhaps that’s inevitable for an autobiographer who is considering running for president, but there are times when the reader feels he is being “spun” rather than enlightened. It’s well known, for example, that Clinton and former national security adviser James L. Jones clashed bitterly over the role of her Afghanistan adviser, Richard Holbrooke. But you would barely realize that from the anodyne account she provides in “Hard Choices.”

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Edward Snowden took less than previously thought, says James Clapper

As the intelligence community continues its assessment of the damage caused by Edward Snowden’s leaks of secret programs, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says it appears the impact may be less than once feared because “it doesn’t look like he [Snowden] took as much” as first thought.

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